


a deafening hush

by TheSpaceCoyote



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [6]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Blood and Gore, Force Healing, Human Sacrifice, Hurt Armitage Hux, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Resurrection, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-31
Updated: 2019-01-31
Packaged: 2019-10-20 02:04:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17613365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSpaceCoyote/pseuds/TheSpaceCoyote
Summary: This time, Kylo Ren is too late to save his general.





	a deafening hush

**Author's Note:**

> Once I got the idea for this I couldn't let it go. I love force healing and resurrection as a concept. I've read a few fics exploring it already but I thought this would introduce a new angle, perhaps?
> 
> Done for the "Used in a ritual/sacrifice" space on the Bad Things Happen Bingo. 
> 
> My lack of strong lore knowledge might be the most obvious in this fic, and I'm not totally satisfied, but still! Glad I could put it out.

Kylo doesn’t remember the name of the planet he and his knights land on. He saw it flashing over the display of his ship as he shot through the atmosphere but he can’t recall it now, as he stands in the ravaged interior of a stone temple on the edge of some backwater farming village deep in the Outer Rim.

It’s cold inside, the slotted windows in the building’s walls doing little to keep in heat now that it’s deserted. Kylo’s breath fogs in the air, helmet removed and held loosely in his hand. Blood streaks the floor around him, the circular slate littered with bodies of the slain. The scent of plasma-burnt flesh and ozone fills his nose as he strides through the massacre, flicking aside the bodies lying in his way.

How these feeble cultists could’ve annihilated an entire dispatch of stormtroopers escapes him.

Those not killed immediately in the pews of the temple have fled out into the darkness, pursued by Kylo’s knights. But the master himself remains, drawn towards the center of the temple, saber already deactivated and stowed in his belt.

Stone steps lead Kylo up a large raised dais, its sides shallowly carved with symbols and its surface bathed in light. As he raises his eyes he sees a yawning oculus cut into the ceiling, streaming the glow of twin moons in from above.

His boots settled atop the dais as he moves into the light, swallowing its dusky rays in the deep mass of his presence. Kylo’s eyes travel from the edges of the worn designs radiating out from the altar, coming to rest upon the body spread out atop it.

General Hux lies on his back, arms forced out above his head and legs together. Bronze clasps, oxidized sickly blue with age and exposure, hold his limp wrists and ankles against the stone.

He’s nude from the waist up, jacket and uniform layers stripped from his body and nowhere to be found. The moonlight bathes him in an ethereal glow, turning the general’s skin ghostly and hair glimmering like blanched fire. He might even be beautiful like this, if not for the deep gashes cutting into his flesh.

A chasm of red splits his chest from shoulder to shoulder, sawed through his ribcage and bisected by a long slit down the midline of his belly. Trails of blood drip over his rigid clavicle and down the thin channels in his ribs to spread over the mottled stone of the altar. The wounds differ from those of a saber or blaster, open and glistening as opposed to cauterized and clean. It’s been awhile since he’s witnessed such crude marks of violence.

A tight, misting breath exhales through Kylo’s lips.

He knows the general is dead. He’d known before even landing on the planet.

He’s grown used to the pace of Hux’s mind running like the ceaseless hum of engines, a constant background noise in Kylo’s senses even when they stand lightyears apart, fighting their own battles for the Order.

He’d understood what the abrupt, cutting silence had meant the moment it’d rent into his chest as he’d sat trapped and _useless_ in the cockpit of his ship.

Kylo’s eyes drift over Hux’s form, finding difficulty focusing. There’s something welling up inside him, threatening his thin composure as he numbly absorbs the scene of Hux’s death.

They’d used a knife, a flat blade with a blunted tip, ornamented at the hilt and utterly useless in any advanced combat. It lies on the edge of the dais, dropped in haste as its wielder fled before the onslaught of the Knights of Ren. Hux’s blood coats the old metal, leading a trail of red back to the general’s body.

Kylo leans over him, blocking out the glow of the moons streaming in from the oculus. Hux’s skin grays with the shadow, eyes flat and deadened without the light giving them a false gleam. Blood paints the general’s mouth, static and lifeless, already seeped and _stained_ into the delicate crimps of his lips.

It’s so strange to stand this close to Hux without his incessant thoughts feeding into Kylo’s mind, the unyielding presence he’s come to rely on snuffed like a spent flare. Usually he only achieves this kind of silence in the deepest depths of his meditation, but now—standing grounded in reality, confronted with the corpse of his co-commander—Kylo can’t escape it, can’t fill the sudden hollow inside him.

Anger surges forth instead to furnish his emptiness, pulsating out from his core to the tips of his fingers. He inhales sharply, lips trembling in an effort to conceal his emotions.

 _They’ll pay they’ll pay all of them will pay_ —

The temple’s walls and domed ceiling are adorned with carvings of unimportant deities and false symbols, scribbled in rock in a futile attempt to pry meaning out of the void so senseless to those without the Force to guide them. Kylo knows the blood soaking into the stone dais will dry a mute prayer, unheard in the endlessness of the galaxy.

Nothing will come from the general’s death.

**_—They’ll pay!_ **

Some ritual trinkets laid across the steps of the altar shatter, dripping pungent oils and tepid wine down towards the floor of the temple. The sound of bursting glass echoes through the temple before silence swallows up everything within its stone walls once more, leaving nothing but the sound of Kylo’s own harsh pants in his ears. A rough moan keens up from his throat as he sinks to his knees beside Hux’s body, fist crunching into the stone beneath his head.

Kylo finally gives into the crumble of agony that’s been building inside of him ever since he sensed Hux’s death in the atmosphere of this cursed, _insignificant_ little planet, festering with heathenswho thought killing Kylo Ren’s general would possibly help save them. 

The Force simmers eagerly at his fingertips, hungry for his hatred. He lets it feed, relishing in the strength as he feels the full weight of his failure.

_No…_

_No._

_He can’t allow this._

Kylo straddles Hux’s slit stomach, removing a glove to touch the side of the general’s face. Perhaps to foolishly seek warmth he already knows to be extinguished—but despite the cold flesh that greets his palm the gesture echoes so many familiar nights and quiet moments that his heart yearns even as it cracks in pain.

 _Stars_. His face still looks imperious, even with the cruelty of his death.

Kylo can’t imagine Hux begging, not even when captured, stripped of his rank and about to die. Not long ago these temple walls must have rebounded with the sound of the general’s voice, his commanding screams as he threatened the dirty miscreants with swift and violent retribution. Kylo can almost envision it, the echo of Hux now so easily imprinted in his mind after all their years beside each other. He holds onto it, keeps the memory close—a crux of his rage and sorrow **.**

He needs to hear his general’s voice once more.

Hux’s head moves with the cradle of Kylo’s palm, body not yet locked in death. He’s never been this pliable in his hands, not even in sleep orpost-coital. Kylo tilts Hux’s chin towards his chest as he leans to press their foreheads together, strands of ginger hair falling between his fingers as he grips the back of his skull. Kylo’s lips move, mute words echoing out lonesome, for once unable to reach the general’s departed mind.

 _I won’t let you leave me_.

He lays Hux back against the dais, freeing his limbs of the decrepit cuffs with a wave of his hand. Kylo moves the general’s arms to lie at his sides, and if not for his open eyes he might look like he’s resting, as if in a moment he’ll rise to reprimand Kylo for taking so long.

When he’s finished freeing Hux from his bonds he touches his face again, brushing the hair off the general’s forehead like even his body could vanish if Kylo left him.

He’s unsure where along the line he’d learned to use such gentleness.

Kylo strokes his finger over Hux’s delicate eyelids but doesn’t close them, leaves them staring in accusation above him, to the artifices circling the ceiling. His hand trails from Hux’s face, brushing past his still lips and down his stiff neck until he reaches the crux of the general’s wounds. Kylo straightens his back, tipping his chin up to look through the oculus, following Hux’s blank stare to the pale glowing moons and dark blue canopy of stars. There he closes his eyes, bathes himself in darkness as he seeks out the deepest knot of his anguish, his _hatred_ , unraveling the tightly clenched emotions and letting it flow through his body.

He’s never had the tranquility to heal the way the Jedi had, drawing upon their compassion and discipline to cure the weaknesses of the body—but Hux is already dead, far beyond the remedy of _their_ ways. They would leave him to disappear into the cosmic noise, consigned to oblivion—but Kylo’s not so _docile._

He understands how to deal in death. 

Kylo presses his fingers into Hux’s skin, two digits slipping into the gap of his wound, feeling out the ragged flesh and congealed blood. The general’s body shakes slightly with such treatment, his head tipping to the side. Kylo sets his teeth on edge, grappling with his anguish and hatred, trying to bind them together inside his mind.

There have been others used in the past—casualties momentarily spared to test his abilities before he killed them once more. But none of those deaths had ever cut him this deep, drove up such an upwelling of pain. His chest and throat hurt, as if injured himself by invisible wounds, feeling like he too may die without Hux there to clasp his hands to those gaps in his armor and keep him whole.

 _He needs him_ — _deeply._

_Selfishly._

Kylo’s mind leaches out from within the walls of the temple and into its forested surroundings, towards barren fields and lowly dwellings of wood and stone, dodging the presence of his knights and pursuing the targets in their stead. He knows they would’ve hunted every heathen to the last, drenched the earth and fallow fields in blood and brought their bones as tokens, trophies to soothe their master’s rage—but Kylo _needs_ the culprits alive now, his darkened tendrils of power lashing into the minds, infecting like a tincture of ink in water. He wraps tight about them, plunging into Hux’s murderers, feeling the horror hammering through their being as he easily pries them open—

Visions suddenly rise up before him—unfamiliar homes and families, births and deaths and daily rituals, fear burning bright above all as they cower before the Force, begging clemency from the fake gods they’d tried to ply with sovereign blood—hundreds of lives, _millions_ of memories passing through his mind in an instant, and above it all a question pulling at him, testing his willingness, his desperation and depths of depraved devotion.

 _All for this_?

Kylo’s eyes slip open and fall for a moment upon Hux, lingering upon his pallidskin and dull red hair, longing for the vitality to return to every inch of him. His stained palm presses hard into the still chest beneath him, memory of his general’s voice withering the inconsequent pleas of his killers as they hang in Kylo’s grasp, inescapably confronted with their transgressions.

He lifts his gaze from Hux’s corpse and calls to challenge his own, merciless answer.

 _Yes. Always_.

With a snarl and a clench of his fist above his head he _tears_ the life from their bodies, _all_ of them, leaving enervated corpses to rot and crumble in their own fields and forests as he draws the screaming essence from every direction back to the center of the temple—to the site of false and _foolish_ hopes, to finally imbue its insensate stones and paled facades with true power.

Violent red blinds Kylo, howls of pain and dissolution flooding through his head as the lives of those who had stolen Hux—bound and cleft him open, painted his blood upon their useless altar—funnel through the oculus above, fused into a spiral of raw energy fed down through the anguished channel of Kylo’s mind. It flows from his raised arm, snaking down his chest and trunk like arteries of fire towards the hand placed on Hux’s chest, where the heel of his palm digs into the warm meat of his wounds. Blood wells up around Kylo’s fingers, coaxed from the general’s dead heart as the Force ripples through him, fueled by its master’s madness as it grasps for the last elusive thread of Hux’s life.

These murderers had tried to snatch it away from him to feed their needs in vain. But now—melted in a crucible of vitality, bound together by Kylo’s hatred—their deaths will truly rebirth something beautiful.

The air around him _crackles_ , ionized with his final shout of fury as the Force resounds through the temple walls, splitting the stone carvings and shattering the pews, flakes of rotted plaster crumbling down around him. His own heart threatens to stop for a moment, body almost overwhelmed but then Hux’s chest shudders and juts up beneath his palm, a raw gasp sucking air into his sunken lungs.

Kylo falls forward, barely able to catch himself from collapsing completely atop Hux. The general writhes on the stone in his shadow, fingers brushing up against where Kylo’s fist still curls against his sternum. His eyelids flutter rapidly, pain and shock twitching through his features as he struggles to grasp what’s happened to him.

Kylo carefully unclenches his fingers, letting them fan out atop Hux’s chest to feel the steadying rise and fall of his breaths. The wounds have knit over in new flesh, shiny and pink and sure to fade into insignificant scarring with time. Kylo wonders how long it will be before he can stroke over Hux’s chest, feel the beat of his heart without thinking of him lying flayed and bloody on the dais.

But he lives, he _lives_. Relief gradually replaces the fire in Kylo’s veins as he pants, air around them both rarefied in the aftermath.

Beneath him Hux’s coughs—chest shaking with the effort of redrawing breath—and turns his chin to the side. Tarry blood drips onto the stone for a few moments before he spits clear, saliva glistening over the dry red on his lips. His cheeks pink with exertion, eyelids momentarily fluttering. Kylo brushes his fingers against Hux’s mouth, clearing away the mess and wiping it against the stone ground.

“That’s it,” he whispers, voice so soft and spent, “come back to me.”

“ _Ren_ …” And there—the quietest kiss of sound against his hand, enough to replenish the hollow inside him for now so Kylo clings to it, cups Hux’s cheek in both hands to coax his incessant presence back into the world.

Sharp green refocuses on Kylo’s face as the general’s expression flickers through a storm of emotions—confusion, horror, accusation, _adoration_ —it hardly matters, _stars_ , not when Hux lives, when his mind’s returned to fill the devastating silence left by his departure.

Kylo can sense the flurry of questions coming from Hux but quells them with a quiet whisper, lips vowing on the arch of the general’s cheekbone. There’s time yet for Hux to grasp the depths of his dedication, to properly absorb the lives Kylo’s granted him—but it will wait until after they arrive back aboard the _Finalizer_.

His knights return slowly, standing amongst the ruined pews and corpses to give their master a wide berth, as if aware something beyond even their comprehension has occurred here. Kylo drapes his cowl over Hux, tucking it around his body to hide his nakedness from their eyes as he lifts him up. The general mumbles something indistinct, protest wavering on his lips as he rests against Kylo’s strong chest, finally lifted away from the bloodstained altar that had been his grave.

 _Yes_. There will be time for everything— _after_ Kylo has razed the temple and its surroundings to a blackened stain in the earth.

**Author's Note:**

> This guy's got a thing about destroying temples, huh?
> 
> I'm on [tumblr](http://thethespacecoyote.tumblr.com) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/heir_of_breath7) if you guys would ever like to hit me up and chat! I'd love to brainstorm more about these two.


End file.
